Recently a background check amendment failed in the US Senate. While opposed by the NRA, increased background checks might be a tool that could be used against the practice of using legitimate straw buyers to purchase firearms for smuggling into Mexico and other countries. Currently the practice of straw buying is against the law but difficult to prosecute unless a gun is caught at the border or in Mexico within a year of the purchase. Requiring that all non-family transfers be run through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS Check) might put a new tool in the hands of law enforcement to prosecute and discourage the illegal practice of straw buying.
The practice of amassing guns for illegal transfer to Mexican drug cartels begins either with an 'order' to a US-bound broker or with the broker himself. The broker then either engages straw buyers directly or other brokers to engage straw buyers. This practice is described in a document from the Wilson Center (See Document Here). While buying a gun for someone else is prohibited by law, it is not illegal to sell that weapon later for any legitimate reason, complicating the prosecution of the straw buyer. I believe that requiring all sales to go through a background check would discourage many of the straw purchasers as too-frequent transfers might be flagged and if a gun showed up at the border or inside Mexico without a NICS Check, the straw buyer could be prosecuted for gun trafficking and/or failure to follow the background check law.
Both of New Mexico's Senators , Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall, voted for the checks. Although I am still recommending their replacement, Udall in 2014 and Heinrich in 2018, it is because of their votes for magazine restrictions. On background checks, I was prepared to give them a pass.
Although I agreed with the NRA that background checks would do little to stop school shootings as happened at Newtown, there is a need to address illegal gun trafficking. Rational background checks and stiffer gun trafficking laws might help. Although the quantitative data sensationalized by the press is suspect, there are a great many firearms crossing into Mexico purchased by legitimate US persons as straw buyers.
The practice of amassing guns for illegal transfer to Mexican drug cartels begins either with an 'order' to a US-bound broker or with the broker himself. The broker then either engages straw buyers directly or other brokers to engage straw buyers. This practice is described in a document from the Wilson Center (See Document Here). While buying a gun for someone else is prohibited by law, it is not illegal to sell that weapon later for any legitimate reason, complicating the prosecution of the straw buyer. I believe that requiring all sales to go through a background check would discourage many of the straw purchasers as too-frequent transfers might be flagged and if a gun showed up at the border or inside Mexico without a NICS Check, the straw buyer could be prosecuted for gun trafficking and/or failure to follow the background check law.
Both of New Mexico's Senators , Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall, voted for the checks. Although I am still recommending their replacement, Udall in 2014 and Heinrich in 2018, it is because of their votes for magazine restrictions. On background checks, I was prepared to give them a pass.
Although I agreed with the NRA that background checks would do little to stop school shootings as happened at Newtown, there is a need to address illegal gun trafficking. Rational background checks and stiffer gun trafficking laws might help. Although the quantitative data sensationalized by the press is suspect, there are a great many firearms crossing into Mexico purchased by legitimate US persons as straw buyers.
Although I did not oppose the NRA stance on background
checks, it seems to me that such checks would help to better follow gun
trafficking. Of course if a gun was
resold without a background check, the law would do nothing unless stiffer gun
trafficking laws were in place.
I suggest that Senator Heinrich and Udall engage the NRA in a sincere discussion on improved anti-trafficking legislation. As a member, I have suggested this same thing to the NRA. The US is already culpable in the deaths of thousands in Mexico's drug wars because of the insatiable thirst for illegal drugs. Let's try to clamp down on illegal gun trafficking to Mexico. Such trafficking puts a stain on all legitimate gun owners and the NRA if we don't take a stand on the issue.
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